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Immigrants and Medicare

Aren't there are about 15M undocumented?

Let's even say the undocumented are included in your 314,000,000. The premise still holds, but that's not relevant to you.
 
Let's cut the BULLSHIT, RJ.

How would YOU fix the US of A so that everyone gets a fair chance and lives a quality life?

Hmmm hmmm?
 
Deacon923 said:
Look, I am all for improving and reforming poor relief in this country but to reform something you have to understand it. Your posts, and sailor's, indicate a belief that current poor relief programs are giving lots of handouts to able-bodied people who should be working. If that were true, I would agree with you that we need to stop those handouts or at least tie them to participation in job training programs or other efforts designed to get the recipients into a job. I think a lot of people on the conservative side of the spectrum have this sincerely held belief that there are a bunch of slackers out there drawing a government check, which belief logically leads to the conclusion that we ought to cut the programs and kick these slackers off the dole.
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I think to reform something you also have to understand how it is actually administered in the real world regardless of how they are written. I would challenge you to walk into any Medicaid clinic and explain to me why each person in there is clearly eligbile. Listen, I'm not saying those folks don't deserve the care they are being provided and I am not trying to make that argument on this thread. What I am saying is that the theory of the requirements of the programs in your mind differs greatly from their current implementation, and that alone should be cause for reform.
 
2&2 - I don't disagree with anything in your last post, although you and I may draw different conclusions as to solutions. No doubt there is fraud and no doubt people game the system.

For example, here in NC, you have a bunch of laid-off former textile workers who have suddenly discovered a disability. I don't defend that behavior, but I also recognize that these people by and large did everything that was expected of them by getting a job, going to work every day, paying taxes, buying a house, etc. Then one day they got knifed in the back by the global economy. There is nothing to replace those jobs. No one will hire them. Some of them can go to community college and get a service-sector job that pays half what they used to make. Some of them can't even get those jobs. So in the end the only way they can find to get regular income and health care is disability, which also gets them into Medicaid.

What is the answer for those people? Tighten up the disability rules and let them lose their homes and health insurance, so they end up having their chronic conditions treated in the ER for free at great expense to the taxpayer? If we're going to tighten up the DI rules, fine, but in doing so we have to recognize what led a 50 year old former textile worker to that place in life and figure out what we're going to do about it.

This is why the GOP laser focus on fraud and waste and debt is so frustrating. Conservative principles and conservative thinkers need to be a part of solving these problems, because they reigh in the statist tendencies of the left. Instead, all you get out of today's GOP is scandal-mongering and finding some way to blame the poor and Obama for the debt, while actively avoiding the bigger picture of how the globalization of our economy and the stagnation of lower and middle class earnings has thrown more and more people into poverty and onto the dole.
 
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No, the solution is to scrap the entire current system and install a true safety net program applicable to everyone, regardless of the reason why they need it. But fund it from taxes directly tied to the sources of theparticular problems, not general income tax like we do now. That is the only way to both address the current problem and attempt to reduce its causation moving forward.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
No, the solution is to scrap the entire current system and install a true safety net program applicable to everyone, regardless of the reason why they need it. But fund it from taxes directly tied to the sources of theparticular problems, not general income tax like we do now. That is the only way to both address the current problem and attempt to reduce its causation moving forward.
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People pay tax on their income. Part of that tax goes to an emergency fund for when they don't have income. Simple and makes sense.

What would you tax instead?
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
No, the solution is to scrap the entire current system and install a true safety net program applicable to everyone, regardless of the reason why they need it. But fund it from taxes directly tied to the sources of theparticular problems, not general income tax like we do now. That is the only way to both address the current problem and attempt to reduce its causation moving forward.
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This is what I think too. I have to say though that funding it through a causation-based tax is probably completely politically infeasible and perhaps economically unwise. A tax on a company that globalizes jobs is likely to have the perverse effect of chasing the company offshore faster to avoid US taxes, for example. But if it could be done, this would be the way to do it.
 
PhDeac said:
People pay tax on their income. Part of that tax goes to an emergency fund for when they don't have income. Simple and makes sense.

What would you tax instead?
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The Medicaid/healthcare related taxes are easy. Fast food, soda, beer, chips, cigs, pizza.

Unemployment taxes are more difficult, but any manufacturing equipment, computers, and software would probably be where to start. I think also opening a market for unemployment insurance on the individual level (similar to disability) would be helpful. As 923 says you could also focus it on outsourcing.

IMO, a big reason our entire system is screwed up is because the revenues are completely disconnected from the expenses. The amount you pay in revenue has no bearing on the expenses, so there is no incentive to control them or alter the behavior requiring the expenditures.
 
OGBDeacon07 said:
Rounding up again, huh?

They say it's 11.1 million.

But I guess it's all just semantics to you anyhow..
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However many they think will apply for the amnesty, you can pretty much up that number by at least 20%, if not double it. This is because many more will come over while it is being discussed, the enormous amount of fraud that occurs with an amnesty, and the US government's tendency to be shitty at counting.
 
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